Yippie kay ay!

We find the Deli in these categories:

• New Business of the Year
• Best Restaurant of the Year
• Commercial Space of the Year

This is thrilling for us. Now the countdown is on to June 24th (Thursday) to see if we can bring home the big prizes.

A big thank you to everyone who recommended us and a “hats off” salute to the other nominees (who are probably as thrilled as we are).

Once again, thank you Saint John! We’re looking forward to a fabulous evening. We love it here and it’s wonderful to be back home!

Today we thought it would be a good idea to explain a bit about why we keep referring to “we” here on the site and a bit about who “we” are.

To begin with, the Urban Deli is the dream of, and owned by, Liz. But it’s a team of people — up front and behind the scenes. They make the deli “the deli” and so it’s best to refer to “we.”

Maybe more importantly, however, we don’t want to bamboozle anyone into thinking Liz is doing the writing. When Liz posts something, she’ll post it as Liz. She hasn’t posted anything as yet for two reasons: she’s way to busy with all the daily running of the Urban Deli to find time to do it properly and (let’s be honest) she’s a bit shy about writing and having everyone see it. (We’re working on that.)

I’m doing the writing and I am Bill. I have a couple of sites of my own, Writelife and Piddleville, and I’m what Liz refers to as “the web guy.” I put the site together for her and I more or less maintain it, the Urban Deli Twitter stream (@urbandeli) and the Facebook page (a whole other story!). (About the Facebook problem? See this little ramble.)

I asked Liz yesterday how long I had known her and we figured it to be 11 or so years. (I told her it felt like a lot longer!) We met and worked together back in Alberta and, when Liz moved back east, she brought me and Gord with her. (Gord’s another behind the scenes character — sometimes in front — at the Urban Deli). I was at the deli before they began work on it (it was a disaster) and I’ve seen it transform. I speak to Liz almost constantly so I have a good idea about what’s going on and when I don’t I harass her until she gets it to me.

Liz could tell you many stories about me just as I could tell many about her. It’s like the old Mexican stand-off thing: we can’t blackmail each other because the other knows to much about us!

I’m essentially a writer-editor, to a large extent from the marketing side of things, with a good familiarity with the Internet, social media tools, and other tech related things. But compared to actual web designers, or programmers, I’m not really a tech guy. I guess you could say I’m an informed amateur.

And that’s about it. I’m Bill, “the web guy.” Liz is the owner gal. The Urban Deli is a crew of people.

And that’s why we keep saying “we.”